It's a pretty complicated history for just an internet forum! I'll go through it in my own words, which will probably be pretty wordy, but I think it's worth knowing.

Once upon a time Atlus USA decided they wanted to do something different with the internet. They had their own forum where people could post about the games they localize and whatnot but they wanted to try their hand at creating an internet platform for various media. What they created was Atlus Online. It was a forum to start with and their promise was that it would become a central hub of various entertainment with a focus on community, as well as the hints of something larger. They would use this hub to localize MMOs, feature various anime, flash games, there were talks of an online store, and the beginnings of some community-based forum-focused story that they were working on.

The plan fell apart pretty quickly. Atlus Online pretty much just tuned into Atlus USA's MMO division. The anime and flash games were taken down, the beginnings of the forum story were removed (although the weird mascot they created stuck around at my request), and the community became splintered. There were the MMO sections and then there was the Fun & Games section. There was very little to almost no crossover between the various sections. Fun & Games was pretty much just the non-MMO section, where all the people from before the MMOs were introduced stayed, as well as a few new people from time to time, although they never stuck around for more than a few months. That is where we come from. There was a thread called the Joyful Okami Bar we used as our central talking thread. It got locked and as a result I created this replacement thread.

This era lasted from 2009 to 2013. During this time it was very clear that Atlus Online was understaffed and poorly managed. Admins and mods came and went. None lasted for very long. The forum was mostly neglected and all focus was put on the MMOs, but even those were run pretty poorly from what I heard. It was made very clear that Atlus themselves didn't really manage the whole thing well. Each new generation of admins/mods seemed to care less and less about the forums and brought with them a new set of troubles. The few that did care never stuck around. This is largely why the code for this forum is such a mess. I don't think they really knew what they were doing and didn't care to fix it. Forum issues and errors were constant. It was a common occurrence during this time that we wouldn't even be able to log in at all. Forum graphics would be broken and go unfixed for months, certain buttons would lead you to dead sections that just gave you errors, etc.

So in 2013 Atlus gave up on the whole thing and sold the entirety of Atlus Online to Marvelous, including the forum and all the MMOs. We became Marvelous USA (or Marvelous Online, it was unclear) instead of Atlus Online but for the most part things remained pretty much the same as they were before the transfer. Marvelous, by the way, is also the parent company of XSEED. Not too long after this the XSEED forums were apparently hacked pretty badly and taken down (Ammy might be able to give better details on this, being from those XSEED forums). Since Marvelous already had these forums they acquired from the Atlus Online deal they figured they might as well use this time to consolidate their forums into one website. This forum became split into two sections, "Online" was the same stuff as the old Atlus Online sections, while "Console" was the new XSEED forums. It was a pretty awkward situation as the XSEED forums, what should be the main Marvelous forum, became hosted on an old hand-me-down website from Atlus, with a bunch of people having accounts dating back to 2009 and stuff.

This went on until 2014 when Marvelous gave up on the MMO scene, clearly deeming it as much of a failure as Atlus had deemed it. As such the "Online" section of the forum was taken down, effectively ending what had been Atlus Online. XSEED forums stayed on this website, though. As a community we moved to a free proboards forum I created in case anything like this happened. We stayed there for a few months until stuff happened and I deleted the forum. I kind of stepped away from the internet and by the time I came to regret my decision it was too late. During this time AP had created his own proboards forum that they were using. Unaware of this I came back here and asked the admin for a favor. He had already created this Online Refugees section back when the Online side was closed down so I asked him if he could bring this thread back from the dead and put it here, in hopes that the old Atlus Online community would have a place to come back home to. He agreed and over a few weeks time some members slowly started coming back here. Not all of them but enough to keep this place going.

So, yeah, that's the very long and convoluted history of this forum.

Summary:
- Atlus created Atlus Online in 2009
- Marvelous buys Atlus Online in 2013, becomes Marvelous USA/Marvelous Online
- XSEED forums get relocated to the Marvelous USA website
- Marvelous closes down the Online section in 2014, XSEED becomes only section
- This thread is moved here so old Atlus Online members have a place to hang out